Good morning from Dunedin!! Feeling grateful to be here and I couldn’t have done this without one of my best friends, looking after our kids!!

Mindfulness is easy, it’s paying attention, in the here and now, with curiosity, acceptance and openheartedness, and without judging.

That means, it’s mostly an attention trainer!

This week, try to bring your attention to your body, the sensations in your body, just a couple of times a day.

Usually when you’re walking, your mind will wander off. Bringing your focus back to your body can help in stopping this wandering. As often the wandering can be ruminating, worrying, stressing, planning etc. Which only fatigues the brain and makes you feel bad.

Another way to be more mindful of the body is to start practicing yoga. I use the downdog app and absolutely love it! Great for beginners too! You can use it any time, any where, even at your work 🙂

Have a great week!

Don’t forget to register for the upcoming courses, the 8 week MBSR, 6 week creative mindfulness or the just crochet!!!

I had a fun week, teaching mindfulness at Tawa College to teenagers and at the community centre to a younger age group.

I explained to the teens about how thoughts, feelings and actions relate to each other in every day situations. When I asked them if that was already known information, I was so surprised that this basic understanding of our wellbeing, was missing!

So one more time:

Our daily life is a string of situations up on situations. In every situation there will be thoughts popping up in our minds, we feel things in our body, have emotions and we will do something. Or we will avoid doing something.

This determines whether we are on an upwards way, in our spiral of well-being, or on a downward way.

By becoming more mindful of ourselves, and how we react in daily situations, we will get more insight in why we feel the way we feel. And that gives us the opportunity to make changes to what we think, what we feel and what we do so we make sure we get on the way up in this spiral.

This week take some time, to have a good look at where you are on this spiral. At the bottom, half way up, or are you generally feeling all good, standing at the top of your spiral??

Can you think of changes you can make, to keep going upwards? Or to stop from going downwards?

Have a great week, remember to register for the 8 week mindfulness that starts next term, (the above is part of this course). This is a great course for teenagers too! And not just for women 🙂

Monique

💜Healthy Mind, Happy Heart

ps, quiet for the storm. Tawa College session about mindfulness last Monday.

If you missed the pics on facebook https://www.facebook.com/easynowmindfulness/ you can see them below as well.

Hope you join me next year!!

You can learn to crochet at Tawa Community Education in August to get ready for it!

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>>>>Free workout starts here:

Last week we talked about, and practiced, mindful eating at the Creative Mindfulness class. One of the things that came up, is that mindful eating is about keeping the joy in eating, and eat with your full attention, making wise choices about what to eat. Deciding on foodoptions the same way you spend your money wisely.

A great way to do that is to have a lunchdate with yourself. And we are so extremely lucky in Wellington to have so many great food trucks, that this is such a fun exercise too!!

So this week, go on that lunch date!!

Pick something your really like, (maybe a smaller portion of something that is a bit more expensive than your usual lunch), find a nice spot to sit outside, and eat with your full attention. Taking in how it looks, how it feels, how it smells, and how it tasts.